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AN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. 

I 

[From the Records of the National Teachers' Association^ 



At the conclusion of an address on " The 
Progress of University Education/' delivered by 
Dr. J. W. Hoyt, of Wisconsin, before the Na- 
tional Teachers' Association, at Trenton, New 
Jersey, on the 20th of August, 1869, the follow- 
ing resolution, offered by Professor A. J. Rickoff, 
of Ohio, was unanimously adopted, to wit: 

Resolved, That, in the opinion of this Association, 
a great American University is a leading want of 
American education, and that, in order to contribute 
to the early establishment of such an institution, the 
President of this Association, acting in concert with 
the President of the National Superintendents' Asso- 
ciation, is hereby requested to appoint a committee 
consisting of one member from each of the States, and 
of which Dr. J. W. Hoyt, of Wisconsin, shall be 



2 An American University. 

chairman, to take the whole matter under consider- 
ation, and to make such report thereon, at the next 
Annual Convention of said Associations, as shall seem 
to be demanded by the interests of the country. 

A committee was appointed in accordance 
with the resolution, consisting of the following 
gentlemen : 

Dr. J. W. Hoyt, Chairman, Madison, Wis- 
consin. 

Hon. 1ST. B. Cloud, Montgomery, Alabama. 
Hon. Thomas Smith, Little Rock, Arkansas, 
Prof. W. P. Blake, San Francisco, California. 
Hon. B. G. Northrup, New Haven, Conn. 
Prof. L. Coleman, Wilmington, Delaware. 
Hon. C. T. Chase, Tallahasse, Florida. 
Hon. Newton Bateman, Springfield, Illinois. 
Hon. B. C. Hobbs, Indianapolis, Indiana. 
Hon. A. S. Kissel, Des Moines, Iowa. 
Hon. P. McVickar, Topeka, Kansas. 
Hon. Z. T. Smith, Frankfort, Kentucky. 
Hon. T. W. Conway, New Orleans, Louisiana. 
Hon. Warren Johnson, Augusta, Maine. 
Hon. M. A. Newell, Baltimore, Maryland. 
Hon. Joseph White, Boston, Massachusetts. 
Hon. O. Hosford, Lansing, Michigan. 

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LC/71- 



Zfni/oersity Committee. 3 

Prof. W. F. Phelps, Winona, Minnesota. 
Dr. Daniel Read, Columbia, Missouri. 
Prof. J. M. McKinsey, Peru, Nebraska. 
Hon. A. N. Fisher, Carson City, Nevada. 
Hon. Amos Hardy, Concord, New Hampshire. 
Hon. C. A. Apgar, Trenton, New Jersey. 
Hon. J. W. Bulkley, Brooklyn, Xew York. 
Hon. S. S. Ashley, Raleigh, North Carolina. 
Prof. A. J. Rickoff, Cleveland, Ohio. 
Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson, Portland, Oregon. 
Hon. J. P. Wickersham, Harris burg, Penn. 
Hon. T. W. Bicknell, Providence, R. I. 
Hon. J. K. Jillson, Charleston, South Carolina. 
Rev. C. T. P. Bancroft, Lookout Mountain, 
Tennessee. 

Hon. J. S. Adams, Montpelier, Vermont. 
Hon. Wra. H. Ruffin, Richmond, Virginia. 
Prof, Z. Richards, Washington, D. C. 

Xevertheless, in consequence of some over- 
sight, official notice of the appointments did not 
reach the chairman of the committee until so 
near the date of the succeeding Convention that 
a general correspondence with the members 
thereof was found impracticable. Accordingly, 
it was very properly resolved by the committee 



4 An American University. 

to make a preliminary report only at the Cleve- 
land Convention, and leave it to the Association 
to determine whether they should continue their 
labors. 

Pursuant to this decision, the chairman of the 
committee, on the 17th of August, 1870, sub- 
mitted the following preliminary report : 



PRELIMINARY REPORT. 



Notwithstanding the many and various uses hereto- 
fore made of the term university , it may be assumed, 
without fear of successful contradiction, that the lead- 
ing offices of a true university are these : 

1. To provide the best possible facilities for the 
highest and most profound culture in every depart- 
ment of learning. 

2. To provide the means of a thorough preparation 
for all such pursuits in life as, being based upon estab- 
lished scientific and philosophic principles, are entitled 
to rank as professions. 

3. To exert a stimulatino; and elevating influence 
upon every subordinate class and grade of educational 
institutions, by holding up before the multitude of their 
pupils the standards of the highest scholarship, and 
by preparing for their administrative and instructional 
work officers and teachers of a higher grade of quali- 
fications than would be otherwise possible. 

4. To enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge, 
by means of the researches and investigations of its 
professors, as well as by the researches and investi- 
gations of other advanced minds, encouraged to a 



6 An American University. 

greater activity and led to greater achievements by 
the influence of the university example. 

In so far as any institution, whatever its name or 
fame, fails in the fulfillment of this general mission, 
by so much does it fall short of the standard of a true 
university. 

That these several offices of the university are of 
vast importance is so apparent as not to require dem- 
onstration. No people can justly claim to be in the 
highest sense civilized whose aspiring youth are 
compelled to turn their backs upon the best-furnished 
schools of their own country, because they fail to pro- 
vide the facilities elsewhere provided, and requisite to 
a mastery of important branches of study. No gov- 
ernment is faithful to the interests of the people that 
does not, in some way, secure to them equal, and the 
best possible, advantages for gaining a thorough knowl- 
edge of the principles that underlie the several lead- 
ing pursuits in life. No nation can possibly maintain 
a system of popular education worthy of a great and 
free people which does not place at its head an insti- 
tution or class of institutions potent enough, by virtue 
of its own exalted character, to exert a controlling and 
elevating influence upon the whole series of schools of 
inferior rank. No people of intellectual energy and 
genius may hope for the approval of God and the 
enlightened portion of mankind which does not make 
it? full contribution to the advancement of knowledge. 

If these several declarations as to the mission of the 



Preliminary Report. 7 

university, and the importance of that mission, be 
true, then it is a logical conclusion that no competent 
nation may stand acquitted before its own conscience 
and the enlightened judgment of the world until it 
can point to one such center of original investigation 
and educational power. 

It is not deemed necessary, in this connection, by a 
presentation of facts so abundant on" every hand, to 
make proof of the absolutely deplorable condition of 
higher education everywhere in the New World, and 
that we have, as yet, no near approach to a university 
in America — a statement which no well-informed citi- 
zen wdll venture to deny — a fact freely acknowledged 
and bewailed by the responsible heads of the very 
highest of all our higher institutions. 

Nor do your committee deem it important to show 
the relative inferiority of our foremost institutions by 
mortifying comparisons of them with those intellectual 
centers, the universities of Paris, Turin, Yienna and 
Berlin, — themselves still incomplete in that they simply 
include the old faculties, regardless of the equal claims 
of the new professions, — each with its grand cluster of 
some two hundred professors, of whom many are the 
ablest and most brilliant men of the age, and each 
provided, moreover, with an array of libraries, cabi- 
nets, museums, laboratories, and other auxiliaries, of 
the vastness and richness of which the struggling stu- 
dent in the American college can have but little con- 



8 An American University. 

ception. Facts upon which such comparisons might 
be based have long been before the country. It will 
soon come to be known to our people, and the sooner 
the better, that in respect of higher education we are 
about the lowest in the scale of the nations making 
any pretensions to civilization. 

Surely further evidence is not needed of our serious, 
and we may add shameful, deficiency in this regard. 

If it be asked whether the conditions necessary to 
the establishment and maintenance of a true univer- 
sity are found in this country, our reply is, Where 
else on the earth do they exist, if not here ? Not in 
the Old World, certainly, where the existing univer- 
sities, founded, many of them, during the Dark Ages, 
and all of them more or less in the interest of class, 
would be reformed with great difficulty, and only after 
changes should first have been wrought in the civil 
institutions and in the very constitution of society 
itself. But here in America, where only in all the 
world just ideas of fraternity and equality have place 
and are kindly cherished; where the elements of 
society and of all classes of institutions are yet plastic ; 
where there are no crystalized, much less fossilized, 
educational systems to be overturned and got rid of; 
where, on the other hand, there is an open field and a 
hopeful groping for the right way ; nay, more, where 
individual philanthropists and both State and National 
Governments are ready with vast resources, growing 



Preliminary Report. 9 

vaster every day, to join in the work of laying its deep 
and broad foundations, what hinders that here we 
begin at once the upbuilding of a university commen- 
surate with the greatness of our country and the needs 
of the times ? 

In the early history of America, the circumstances 
were a sufficient excuse for low standards of general 
and professional education. But the period of infancy 
and poverty has been passed. We are at this moment 
a rich and powerful nation. Moreover, the opinion is 
coming to be universal that this is a nation of great 
destinies. And who that looks at the democratic 
character of our institutions, reared as a sublime ex- 
ample in the face of all the doubting and jealous 
nations of the world ; at the strange heterogeneousness 
of a population gathered from every clime under 
heaven, speaking in all the babbling tongues of earth, 
bound together by no common bond of historic associ- 
ations, and cherishing the most diverse and conflicting 
views of social, religious and political institutions ; at 
the undeveloped resources of a territory already vast, 
and yet increasing with a rapidity that promises, 
within the lifetime of the coming generation, to em- 
brace the entire continent ; at the unparalled activity 
and resistless energy of this wonderful mosaic of 
peoples, destined, ere the close of this century, to 
number one hundred millions ; — who that looks at all 
these conditions of national life can resist the convio- 



10 An American University. 

tion that we have indeed a sublime mission to fulfill, 
and that we have need even now of a keener and more 
far-seeing intelligence ; of a profounder knowledge of 
the sciences, material, intellectual, social and political; 
of a more substantial, all-pervading virtue ; in short, 
of a deeper, higher, and more comprehensive culture 
than the world has hitherto seen, or even recognized 
as essential to any of the other great nations, past or 
present ? 

Language is powerless to convey an adequate idea 
of the rapidity with which the thoughts, tendencies 
and purposes of the American people are all the w r hile 
forming, changing and shifting, to adapt themselves 
to new exigencies. The very elements, social and 
political, are in a ceaseless ferment. Circumstances 
and conditions which the most sagacious fail to antici- 
pate are daily arising to test the intellectual power 
and conscience of the nation. We repeat it, no nation 
had ever such need of disciplined mind to lead in the 
development of its resources and guide its intellectual 
energies ; none such need of moral powder to correct 
its necessarily strong material tendencies, and steadily 
hold it up to a noble and lofty ideal. 

If, therefore, it is in truth, as we have assumed, one 
important office of the university to supply such dis- 
cipline and such correcting and elevating power, what 
stronger argument could be framed for the founding 
and liberal sustaining of one such institution in this 



Preliminary Report. 11 

country, high enough in range to meet the demands 
of the most exalted ambition, and broad enough to 
answer the needs of every profession ? 

We could hardly hope for more than one, at least 
for a long time to come, for it must needs be supplied 
with a multitude of able professors, covering not only 
the whole range of letters, pure science and philos- 
ophy, together with the several fields of* the time- 
honored professions, but also the yet more numerous 
and, for a time, more difficult ones of the new profes- 
sions ; a great and choice library, such as this country 
does not yet possess ; and a large number of thoroughly 
furnished laboratories, museums and other costly sci- 
entific establishments. But then one such university 
in America would at once become a power, influential 
alike in furthering and directing our material develop- 
ment, in elevating the character of the lower educa- 
tional institutions of the country, and in awakening 
and sustaining higher conceptions of both individual 
and national culture ; thus helping us, by a happy 
combination of our own more than Roman energy and 
religious faith with the grace and refinement of the 
Greek civilization, to become a nation fully worthy of 
the future that awaits us. 

It would do more, vastly more than this. It would 
supply to all lands a most important need of the times — 
a university placed under the benign influence of free 
civil and religious institutions, and sublimely dedicated 



12 An American University. 

to the diffusion and advancement of all knowledge. 
Students of high aspirations, and even ripe scholars of 
genius, would eventually flock to its halls from every 
quarter of the globe, adding to the intellectual wealth 
of the nation should they remain, or bearing with 
them scions from the tree of liberty for planting in 
their native lands. And thus America, already the 
most marvelous theater of material activities, would 
early become the world's recognized center of intellec- 
tual culture as well as of moral and political power. 

It is not assumed that this ideal is capable of reali- 
zation in a single year, nor in ten years ; for, if the 
pecuniary means were at hand, the maturing of wise 
plans, the preparation of teachers through protracted 
foreign study, and the labor of organization and mate- 
rial establishment would require at least one decade. 
It would be a glorious consummation if on the one 
hundredth anniversary of our national independence 
it should be even permitted us to announce to the 
world that the first great steps insuring the early estab- 
lishment of the long-hoped-for American University 
had already been taken. The ideal here presented in 
rude outline, or some other more perfect ideal, is 
capable of realization ; and, in the things of intellec- 
tual culture and social advancement, whatsoever is 
possible, that it is the moral duty of the individual, 
society, or the Government, or these several forces 
combined, to undertake. 



Preliminary Report. 13 

Whether the institution contemplated should be an 
entirely new one, founded in a new place, or whether 
some one of the few institutions that have already 
made such noble beginnings of high educational work 
should rather be made the nucleus around which the 
earnest friends of university education of every section 
should rally for its upbuilding ; whether it should be 
what the Italians mean by a free university, or whether 
the Government, State or National, should have part 
in its management — these are questions upon which 
there«must necessarily be differences of opinion. 

But be the diversity of views as to the precise char- 
acter of the institution, the place of its location, and 
the mode of its constitution and government, what it 
may, upon the primary question of whether we will 
have a university in America somewhere, and at the 
earliest possible day, there should be no difference of 
opinion. 

There is one other question, moreover, that may be 
settled now. It may be safely assumed in advance, 
that the founding and endowing of the institution is a 
work in which it will be necessary for the citizen, the 
State and the General Government to unite ; for it 
will cost millions of money, and require the careful 
guidance of the wisest scholars and statesmen the land 
can afford. And who doubts that all these forces — 
the people, the State, and the National Government — 
will respond if the scholars, the active laborers in the 



14: Aii American University. 

cause of education, and the leading statesmen of the 
country, with one voice demand it? 

When, a few years since, the men of work asked 
help of the nation for the endowment of schools for 
the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts, the 
Government, with a liberal hand, gave for this noble 
object ten million acres of the public domain, to which 
the individual States and great-hearted men have 
added no less liberal means. How much more then, 
proportionally, will our statesmen in council and lib- 
eral patriots yield for the foundation and maintenance 
of one great central institution, to be established in the 
interest of every profession and all classes of schools, 
of a profound and universal culture, of a more perfect 
intellectual and social development of the whole body 
of the nation, in the interest of liberty and universal 
man! 

In the opinion of your committee, the attention of 
the Association has not been called to this subject a 
moment too soon. The trial of its political institutions 
through which the American nation has just passed ; 
the manner in which the necessity for education, as 
the only guarantee for the perpetuity of those institu- 
tions, has just been burned into the national conscious- 
ness ; the pressing demand made by our material and 
and social condition for the best educational facilities 
the world can furnish ; and the fast accumulating evi- 
dence that America is surely destined to a glorious 



Preliminary JReport. 15 

leadership in the grand march of the nations — all 
these constitute an appeal to action which it were 
criminal to disregard. The necessity is great. The 
country and the times are ripe for the undertaking. 

The questions that remain for our discussion relate 
to the very important subject of definite ways and 
means. For the proper consideration and satisfactory 
solution of these, your committee have found it neces- 
sary to pray for an extension of the time allotted 
them. 

Respectfully submitted. 

J, W. HOYT, Chairman. 



In compliance with the request of the com- 
mittee, further time was granted, in the hope 
that at the next Annual Convention they will he 
enabled to submit a plan for an organized move- 
ment looking to the early establishment of some 
such institution as the one foreshadowed in their 
preliminary report. 



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